Darting the length of her bedchamber, she threw the door open just as Thorn came skidding to a halt before it. Expecting to encounter the reek of spirits, so familiar from her experience with her late husband, Felicity was surprised when she smelled nothing of the kind.
In the faint glow cast by a night lamp in the upstairs hall, Thorn looked perturbed to a degree Felicity associated with immoderate drinking. His greatcoat was unbuttoned, his hat absent altogether, and his dark hair ruffled either by the wind or his own haste. His eyes, usually the calm, steadfast brown of freshly turned earth, now flashed with the sparks of flint struck against flint.
Gazing up at Thorn as he towered over her, his broad shoulders and muscular torso filling out his greatcoat, Felicity had to anchor herself against the intense attraction that threatened to propel her into his arms.
If only he’d come to confront her any time but now—anywhere but here. Late at night, on the threshold of the room where they’d made love so often. Yet, not often enough. If they held their breaths and listened, they might hear her bed calling them with its sensual siren song.
Her skin warmed with the physical memory of his strong but gentle touch. The sensitive tips of her bosoms thrust out against her nightgown and dressing gown to lure his lips. The sweet fissure between her thighs took fire in readiness for another delicious coupling.
If Thorn Greenwood dropped to his knees and begged for one more night, his face pressed to her bosom and his large deft hands cradling her backside, no power on earth, least of all her own badly divided will, could force Felicity’s lips to frame a refusal.
“Is Ivy here?” he demanded.
The words were so contrary to anything she’d expected that Felicity struggled to understand them.
“Ivy? Your…sister?”
“Of course, my sister.” Thorn’s brusque tone rasped against her kindled passion like a man’s un-shaven cheek grazing the sensitive flesh of her bare neck. “Do you think I’ve come here at this hour because I’ve developed a sudden passion for horticulture?”
Felicity’s fragile sense of anticipation shattered into sharp splinters of ice.
“What on earth would your silly sister be doing in my house in the middle of the night? If this is some spurious pretext for you to barge in here and wake me from a sound sleep, you will regret it, Mr. Greenwood, I assure you.”
“Depend upon it, Lady Lyte, nothing less dire than the defence of my sister’s virtue and reputation could induce me to cross a threshold over which I’m no longer welcome.” Even in the dim light Felicity could see the muscles of Thorn’s firm jaw tighten further. “As to why Ivy might be under your roof, I suggest you put that question to your nephew, the young scoundrel.”
Every word out of his mouth splashed cold water over Felicity’s fevered flesh. Bad enough Thorn Greenwood should come here at this hour of the night, exciting all manner of absurd expectations in her only to smash them to pieces again. But to insult her late husband’s nephew, a young man Felicity loved like the son she’d never expected to have, that was an outrage she would not bear.
“Pray, watch your tongue, Thorn Greenwood! I know of few young men who less deserve to be called a scoundrel than Oliver Armitage. What is my nephew supposed to have done to have compromised your sister’s reputation that she couldn’t do quite as readily on her own? I vow, I never met a more heedless little romp.”
That wasn’t true, Felicity’s conscience reproached her. On those few occasions when she’d encountered Thorn’s younger sister on the town, Felicity had been captivated by the child’s sweet high spirits, so at odds with her brother’s gentle gravity. Despite the difference in their ages, the two women had gotten on famously and Lady Lyte had been known to make quite a fuss over young Miss Greenwood.
Felicity turned a deaf ear to her own reason. Thorn’s unwarranted slight against Oliver demanded tit for tat. He wouldn’t mind any insult to himself half so much as one to his beloved sister.
Thorn’s powerful hands clenched and unclenched, as though barely restrained from grasping her upper arms and shaking her until her teeth rattled. Or perhaps pulling her close to kiss her until her knees gave way. Just contemplating those possibilities left Felicity a trifle dizzy.
“B-besides,” she added, “I doubt Oliver even knows your sister. There cannot be a young man in all of Bath less anxious to venture out on the town.”
Not that his doting aunt hadn’t cajoled him often enough. A fortnight ago, Ivy Greenwood would have been just the sort of winsome creature Felicity might have urged on her nephew to lure him away from his books and his laboratory.
Thank goodness she hadn’t. A shiver snaked through Felicity. Any match between Oliver and Ivy would have bound her inextricably to the Greenwood family, just when she needed to get as far away from Thorn as possible.
The words he hurled at her next echoed Felicity’s deepest fears. “I have reason to believe your nephew and my sister have eloped to Gretna Green.”
Felicity Lyte had no patience whatsoever with women who swooned. She considered it a vapid affectation. The last thing in the world she wanted was for the shock of Thorn’s news to make her wilt into his arms. But as everything around her began to twirl like a child’s spinning top, she found herself with no choice in the matter.
“Felicity!”
Breaking his vow never to budge a step across the threshold of her private chamber again, Thorn hoisted his erstwhile mistress into his arms and carried her to the bed.
As he laid Felicity on the rumpled sheets, the familiar fragrance of rosewater wrapped around him strand by delicate strand, pulling him toward her. It took every crumb of Thorn’s considerable self-control to curb the urge to indulge in one final kiss. The last time he’d pressed his lips to hers, he hadn’t realized it would be the last time.
For a moment, his passion for Felicity blotted every rational thought from Thorn’s mind, including the concern for his sister which had brought him here in the first place. The wild brown tangle of her hair against the pillow tempted his hands to touch. If he inhaled until his head spun and he pitched on top of her supine body, Thorn doubted he could breathe in enough of her subtle fragrance to satisfy him.
He should have known from the moment this beautiful, sought-after creature first invited him to become her lover that she’d made a foolish mistake. What could such a diamond of the first water want with a tiresomely respectable fellow like him? A man of sound but scarcely brilliant intellect, and no pretensions of wit or charm. Not ill-looking, but hardly a beau of fashion. A man with family responsibilities and financial obligations, unable to shower her with presents or even tender an honorable bid for her hand.
Yet, she had chosen him. And for the first time in his steady, dutiful life Hawthorn Greenwood had done something less than respectable. Something furtive. Something scandalous. Something so exhilarating, he could scarcely believe it was happening to him.
Felicity Lyte had offered him a banquet of forbidden fruit. Even as he’d gorged himself upon it, Thorn had found his appetite piqued rather than sated. By mutual agreement the span of their time together had been limited to this one Season at Bath. Then, with several blissful weeks still ahead of them, Thorn had received a tersely-worded letter from Felicity ending their relationship.
As he should have expected, she’d grown tired of him. Found a superior replacement, perhaps.
Now Thorn glanced around her shadow-shrouded bedchamber, satisfying himself that Felicity had been sleeping alone—for tonight, at least.
He shook his head hard to banish his selfish desires and motives. Certainly he’d been angered by the casual manner in which Felicity had cast him off. Hurt, too—might as well admit it. Still, that didn’t give him the right to burst in on the woman at such an uncivilized hour and shock her into a swoon with his distressing suspicions.